Jack Katz

Alec Justice, Jay Hawk, Vaughn Beering, David Ha

(b. 1927, USA)

Jack Katz is an American creator, author and artist residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. He began his career at the age of 16, doing art for Archie Comics and Fawcett's 'Bulletman', and working as an assistant on several strips for King Features in the second half of the 1940s. In the early 1950s, he went to work as a comic book penciler for Stan Lee and Marvel/Atlas Comics, and continued into the early 1970s. He did art on many war, mystery and romance titles, mainly for Marvel, but also for Better Publications. Katz was additionally present in DC's romance titles and in the horror magazines of Warren Publishing and Skywald in the 1970s.

Wild Western #30 (October 1953)

Then he dropped out of mainstream comics to devote twelve years to his 'The First Kingdom' project - a complex science-fiction epic that tells of man's migration into space, the ensuing galactic battles, and the great mystery of mankind's origin before the fall of civilization. Each book is introduced by top talents like Jim Steranko, Stan Lynde, Burne Hogarth, etc. Katz completed this series with issue number 24 in 1986. 'The First Kingdom' stands in the minds of many as the first true graphic novel.

Katz is also a sculpting teacher at the University of California at Berkley. 2005 saw the publication of 'Anatomy by Jack Katz, Vol. 1', a collection of sketches he did over the past decades. In 2015, at the age of 87, veteran artist Jack Katz launched a crowdfunding campaign to finance a new 800 page graphic novel, called 'Beyond the Beyond'.